by Priya Basil15.9.2015 In his memoir, You Must Set Forth At Dawn, Wole Soyinka describes what he calls “one of the most nightmarish journeys of my existence”. It was a taxi ride in June 1993, from Cotonou in Benin to Lagos, Nigeria – where a civilian uprising had begun following General Ibrahim Babangida’s annulment of a recent presidential election. “The roadblocks were made up of empty petroleum barrels, discarded tires and wheel hubs, vending kiosks, blocks of wood and tree trunks, huge stones…anything at all that could form a barrier for any moving vehicle. The strategy for that day was “Stay home. No movement on the roads,” its purpose being to shut down the cities in a national campaign of civil disobedience.” WS goes on to relate how, “The tension in the air became palpable as we moved nearer to Lagos. The roadblocks became more frequent; so did the sight of damaged vehicles and, worst of all, corpses.” Wole Soyinka’s life has seen him forced onto the road – literally made to flee his homeland Nigeria in 1994 after threats from Sani Abacha, the general who deposed Ibrahim Babangida. Before that, regular confiscation of his passport by the Nigerian authorities often prevented WS from traveling, and twice he was imprisoned; the second time for 26 months, mostly in solitary confinement, his movement restricted well beyond harrowing physical limitation. Such limitation must have been especially distressing for someone who regarded the road as a “partner in the quest for extended self-discovery”. As a child, WS been enchanted by the forest lanes and paths around his home in Abeokuta. Back then, he’s written, “the road was a magic lantern whose projections, by some potent hidden hand in those dense forests, unwound like a sash of multiple designs on which we rode from marvel to marvel.” He first followed lure of the road aged barely three when, as revealed in his memoir Ake: The Years of Childhood, he secretly followed his siblings to school and insisted on beginning his studies. Knowledge, he would soon realize, was an endless course of inquiry. His family used to warn each other, “Be careful. He will kill you with questions.” Later, he put those questions into literature. He began by writing for the theatre, but over the years all his work – screen and radio plays, poetry, novels, essays, and autobiography – was unified by two major themes: the nature of power and the quest for justice. In 1986, as you know, Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. You may not know that he’s also received another award, in recognition of what he calls his ‘sustained devotion to the cause of wine’, and which he’s described as “my most treasured recognition, to which even the Nobel takes second place. During a lecture visit to the University of Tours…I was dragged off to a deep underground cave, a multi-chambered grotto. There, over feeble protests at my unworthiness, I was inducted into the Commanderie de la Dive Bouteille de Bourgeuil et de Saint Nicolas de Bourgeille, a centuries old order that boasts as members Rabelais and Voltaire, amongst other illustrious humanists. It was definitely the highlight of my career.” Wole Soyinka decided to take that taxi in 1993 after his flight from Paris to Lagos was diverted to Cotonou, Benin due to the unrest in Nigeria. He made the journey against consular advice and despite the reluctance of his taxi driver – many others had refused, when normally they would have fought each other to transport the writer anywhere. He took that road despite annoyance “that yet another crisis was devouring my life, making me shortchange other constituencies, principally the creative.” He went down that road because he could not stay away while his fellow citizens struggled against injustice. He went also because of a defiant inner impulse, which he explains as “a deeply lodged rejection of restriction of my movements, be it on the authority of the state, of an individual or circumstance, or of some material impediment directed at me, personally or generally.” He concedes this may be irrational, but he says, “At the time, the situation is outside the province of reasoning. Have need, will travel. End of doubts, beginning of motion.” Wole Soyinka made that journey, as he has made many others, in order to assert and preserve freedom – his own and that of humanity at large. In one of my favourite passages from his writing, he observes: “Freedom expresses itself in many ways, but its real essence is movement – that is, the right to exercise the choice to move or not to move. Even thought – which is so marvelously secured from the encroachment of chains and walls – thought…is made possible only through the motion of electrical charges in the brain.”